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Show of the Wasatch Mountains just north of Big Cottonwood Canyon, and in the vicinity of Garfield along the north slope of the Cquirrh Mountains. The existence of the " lake of salt water" amid the wilds of the Rocky Mountains seems to have been known as early as 1689 » A noted French explorer by the name of Baron La Hontan wrote a description of his journey into the far West in that year, and it was published in the English language in 1735* From Lake Superior, La Hontan passed into Green Bay, and by way of the Fox River in what is now the State of Wisconsin, he reached the Mississippi River, which he ascended for nine days, when he reached the " Long River". He sailed up this river for six weeks, passing through various nations of savages of which " a most fanciful description is given". He took the country for the King of France, and described the stream up which he traveled. Reaching a point where the Earcn says he " put up a post designating it as the land of France," he received from the Indians information respecting a lake of salt water. He says: " Two days after, the cacick came to see me and brought with him four hundred of his subjects, and four other savages which I took for Spaniards . . • The Mozeemlek nation is numerous and puissant. The four slaves of the country informed me that at the distance of one hundred and fifty leagues from the place I then was, their principal river empties itself into a salt lake of three hundred leagues in circumference, the mouth of which is two leagues bread; that the lower part of the river is adorned with six noble cities, surrounded with stones cemented with fat earth; that the houses of these cities have no roofs, but are open above like a platform . . . that be- sides the above mentioned cities, there are above one hundred towns, great and small, round that sort of sea, upon which they navigate with boats." La Hontan further adds that if the country ever comes to be settled, there will be easy communication with the South Sea ( Pacific Ocean), which lies between America and China. By the north branch of the great Yellow River, as La Hontan called the main stream, the traveler was able to reach the head waters which are somewhere in the country north of New Mexico. " On the other side are rivers which run into a great lake that empties itself by another great navigable river into the South Sea." This possibly accounts for the long accepted belief that a river heading in the Great Salt Lake ran through the deserts of what is now Nevada and through the Sierra Nevada Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. The information written by La Hontan forms the basis of a map by one Jchn Senex E. R. S. drawn in 1710, and submitted to the Royal Society at London and the Royal Academy at Paris. In June 17& 6, an English explorer by the name of Jonathan Carver left Boston for the interior parts of North America. Carver had been an officer in the French and Indian war, and was desirous of obtaining firsthand information concerning the Indian tribes of the far west, and how much they had been influenced by the French in the heart- of America. He passed through the Great Lakes into what is now the State of Wisconsin. He journeyed en over to the Mississippi, and later reached the Missouri. How far west he went is difficult to say, but it is net unlikely that he came into Wyoming, for he speaks of the Shining Mountains, and is the first writer to use the name of Oregon for the river of the West ( the Columbia). Speaking of the Shining Mountains ( Rocky Mountains), he says: - 2 - |